Introduction
For 1000 long years from the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Europe was shrouded in the dark Middle Ages, plagued by wars, crimes, diseases, mass death and ignorance. The old continent turned into a no-man land, fragmented kingdoms carved out by the barbarians who took the opportunity of the decaying Roman empire. The weak lived on the margin of the society ruled by lawlessness. Reason and logic which were the cornerstone for Western Civilization some centuries before yielded to superstition and fatalism. Church dogma restricted many facets of lives and stunted development. Thousands of knights followed the call of the Church to join the Crusades to stop the expansion of the Moslems, the Slav and Pagans from the east and to reclaim the Holy Land of Palestine. The economy spiraled downward; banks collapsed in the first few decades of the 1300. The Hundred Years War began in 1337 between England and France to settle a dispute of who was best to inherit the French throne: a French king selected by the French noblemen or a distant English king. Bad weather resulted in crop failures in the early 14th century brought about the great Famine which lasted for two years. The Black Death, a plague carried by the fleas on rats, came from the Central East and killed at least one third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1352. Enraged by the unfair tax raised to finance the war, peasant revolted in England and France. It was bleak as it was hopeless. The great Western civilization was on the brink of being lost forever.
Is it?
Shereen and I (Lana returned to Prague in the evening) left Rome at 8 in the morning on a slow regional train which took four hours to get to Florence. We found our seats next to a friendly-looking Australian traveler, made sure that our luggages tightly fit on the overhead rack and our breakfast bags next to us and got ready to sleep. Well, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. In front of us was a group of high-school students on a field trip. Behind us was a bigger group of teenagers. Do I hate kids? Nooooo! I truly think they are all adorable, but when you have to choose between a couple of hours between a moment of peace and the hope of the future, you will choose the former. These coming-of-age Italian youngsters were all skillful speakers as they never seemed to be lost for words. After the high-school students left an hour later, we thought we could finally sleep, but by then the teenagers discovered another pleasure. From then on, at every single stop, a bunch of them shuffled past us to get to the door and returned to their seats when the train started moving. The ritual continued, and we didn’t know what it was until their fifth trip down the aisle that we saw a cigarette butt on one girl’s hand. The teenagers were having their cigarette break.
Not able to sleep, I looked out of the windows to catch a glimpse of the supposedly most beautiful region in Italy. Prior to the trip to Florence, I had been trying to look up from the Internet and the travel guide to pick out a village in Tuscany between Rome and Florence for a layover in order to witness postcard images of yellow grass, green vineyard and winding country roads one often finds about Tuscany. Since I already booked accommodation in Florence, stopping over any city would mean forfeiting the deposit and first night charge. Also if I didn’t follow my schedule, I would not make to the border with Slovenia a day before New Year Eve. Fortunately, I sighted with relief as our train moved closer to Florence as I saw only ugly, brown, muddy soils and barren vineyards beaten by the winter season and resered themselves until spring time.
Our Guest-house Locanda Latina located on Via de Sole, on the corner street leading out of the beautiful Santa Maria Novella square, located only 10-minute walk from the train station. The location and price were perfect. The only discomfort was having no kitchen nor relaxing lounge. There wasn’t a reception either. You have to call a number and wait for someone to come to register and give you the keys. Check-in time is fixed from 11 – 4 and 20-22. So if you don’t arrive in the check-in slots, don’t even bother to call them as they won’t come. Other than that, I recommend this guest-house.
The weather changed drastically from Rome where Lana, Shereen and I walked around in just a T-shirt two days ago. Here, by the evening, Shereen and I froze our asses out and worried about the harsher weather when we later traveled to the border, 300 km up north. The shape of Italy is long and thin like an ugly hiking boot, passing through different temperature zones with major cities and popular tourist destinations distributed evenly along the boot length: Venice, Milan (north), Rimini, Bologna, Tuscany (north-central), Rome (central), Naples (central-south), Sicily, Sardina (south). If you do a tour of the entire country in one zip, you will feel the obvious change in the weather.
…tbc…
Rome We walked to many no-name streets–we couldn’t read map right–and occasionally resting our legs in coffee and ice-cream shops. One thing you will see only in Italy is that no matter how cold and rainy, people still enjoy their supersized ice-cream. By the time we got back to St. Peter square, it was already packed by tourists who formed long queues waiting to get in the church or to be near the fence. The line starts moving faster; the bell begins to ring; the choir sings; the Pope appears on the TV screen walking into the church; the people watch. It is something words can’t describe; pictures can’t convey the emotion; video can’t unveil the spirit. It is something you have to experience at least once.
The hostel messed up my booking and apparently I had no reservation. The Indian guy at the counter with a stern face delivered the words that there would not be free room in the most serious manner possible while repeatedly reassured us that everything would be okay. Fifteen minutes into fidgeting by the reception counter, I realized that this guy was someone who wanted to fill the role of man-rescue-damsel-in-distress, so we took turn talking him up and flirted shamelessly to get a room. Well it worked. The only private room available on the first night had two single beds, and we had to pull them together to be able to squeeze for group hug after taking turn photographing one another in bedsheet-as-wardrobe. (No pornographic though provoking intended) Lana and I are lazy workers during the day and Japanese-tourist photographer during other days. The fact that we were on boots and wrapped over by bed linens didn’t prevent us from trying to find that candid, picture-perfect moment. We woke up late the next morning since all of us had no urge to see every thing right away. By the time we woke up and got out, it was time for brunch. We found a buffet-style oisteria near Termini, the main strain station, (Oisteria is a simple eatery, cheaper than Traittoria cheaper than normal ristorante (restaurant)) and ordered a plate of chicken with potato and lasagna. Chicken is chicken everywhere. So are potatoes though the hardcore Eastern Europeans will tell you right away which potato is God-sent to their grandma’s field and which is a smash chunk of shit. I know there are many different ways to prepare potatoes: french fries, american style, baked, boiled, smash etc. But I have no idea you can tell the difference when eating boiled potatoes. Having lunch too often with the Eastern Europeans and seeing them poking the potato as if it alive and looking at it unpleasantly makes me realize that of course they can tell the difference from those potatoes as I can recognize the subtle difference in variety of rice. Lasagna tastes good but then what do I know about Italian cuisine, and there is no such thing as Italian cuisine either. We decided to walk to Vatican which was 45 minutes away and arrived there at two, precisely when it was closed to be prepared for the midnight mass. Not knowing what to do there, we wandered off the main streets and got lost in empty unimportant streets without seeing much of many major sites. None of us is history savvy, good at direction or navigating map so nobody bothered to take the lead in educating ourselves about Rome. For Shereen, it is her first big trip out of her home country Uzbekistan and the new one Czech where she’s currently studying. I don’t know what was up with Lana, but I suspected that empowering the brain wasn’t on her agenda. They both needed to get away somewhere this holiday. Three of us are all foreigners whose families and closed friends are so far away.
When you are in Rome, live like the Romans. That is the motto I occasionally adapt every time I have to squint my eyes trying to finish my glass of beers or pondering in a supermarket whether I should buy a Coca Cola or a Kofola in my quest to become a Czech or spending extra hours to match the color of my top to my pants to my bags to my gloves (shuck) to be what-else a proper, well-groomed European. Now that I’m here at the precise moment when Jesus was born in headquarter of the Catholic sect, I try to be a Catholic. Go ahead and make a believer out of me. After half an hour in total awe by the holy aura all around me, my concentration span again proved to short to sustain the seriousness, I took out the Lonely Planet guide to read about Tuscany to prepare for my next destination, Florence. Later when we told people we attended the midnight mass, everybody said wow. But then the same everybody’s follow-up question “Did you see that woman attacking the Pope?” left us with “Wow, we didn’t see it?” 
It was nothing ugly as the name is borrowed from a movie for attention grabbing effect. Coyote Ugly experience was a cross of holiness and mundane, of the kingdom of father, son and holy spirit where the pure sound church bells resounded to heaven and the human realm where drum-and-base music blasted the ears and where we who sin a lot cramped to get the next booze. At St. Peter square, we hooked up with this bubbly, highly extroverted, energetic, intellectual Brazilian/Mexican/Texans life-change specialist who was currently learning Italian in Milan. He took the train from Milan here because God had told him to do so. You will not think for a second that he is this godaholic, fan of Jesus that sort of thing. He is like Tony Robbin, the good-looking self-help guru meets Joel Osteen, the Christian pastor cum self-help guru. Yup, I’m describing a very American prototype. He was a good sport and company, at least for one girl in our group. Having missed his metro, he returned to join us at the square to share a cab home. It was this God-zealous boy who initiated going to the club. (Ain’t people wonderful. They don’t fit into a single frame of description, so don’t bother to judge). The girl who liked his company said yes right away, the other was somewhere in the middle and being a typical party-pooper, I barked at the suggestion and invented all kinds of reasons why not. It was late. No disco was opened on Christmas eve. Driving around on a taxi would cost load of money. Eventually I gave in. The cab driver stopped somewhere near Colosseum and dropped us off. Antony Robbin/Joel Osteen asked for direction and led three wide-eye-open girls to Coyote. It was 1 o’clock when we arrived. There was only a few people most of whom worked at the club or their friends. We ordered two bottles of wine ad drank on an empty stomach before heading to the dance floor, immediately forgot about God, Jesus, Pope, Vatican and the promise thou-do-not-booze-a-lot and thou-promise-to-be-chaste so and so. It was strange but awesome to spend Christmas Eve in a disco somewhere on an impulse. But while it’s perfectly normal for us who are tourists far away from home, it is a bit strange for local Italians and residents to drive here just to dance the night away.
It was our last day so one way or another, we had to visit Colosseum. We got there at three after objecting Lana’s suggestion to sit down and have a cappuccino beforehand. It was a good thing we didn’t though because last visit our is one hour before sunset. It was in the winter, and the rain had kept on pouring. There was hardly any sun, and it was already gloomy around 3 p.m. The Colosseum was built and complete during the realm of emperors Vespasian and Titus. Able to hold up to 50000 people, it was used for ancient pass-time violent, blood-dripping activities depicted in famous movie “Gladiator.” Scientific founding (eavesdropping on a guidetour) indicates that no fewer than 700,000 died here, mostly from these savage games and from (my own hypothesis) bawls among drunkards. I had huge expectation before the trip to Rome, after all it’s the Eternal city where all roads lead. But unless you sat still and absorbed everything in your classical history class about Rome, the Roman empire and Italy to associate pieces of bricks and statues to thousand-year-old historical events, Rome will be similar to Greece or Turkey. Rome didn’t grab my attention at all. Greece has the first-time effect, and I was going on atour bus with my colleagues in Sarajevo so it was much much more memorable. Istanbul, the capital of the Eastern Roman empire stands rival to Rome. When you travel deep into the heartland of Anatolya, Cappadocia, you will see many more amazing ruins and settlements. That is one disadvantage traveling to popular places. We saw, heard and read about it many times too much that our expectation and imagination are ballooned up out of proportion that nothing seems to satisfy. Two main reasons attracted me to Rome was what else than the quest to visit a new country every month (Vatican is a nation in its own right though the country is like a tiny piece of ground meet in a huge Italy spaghettio dish) and the experience of being closer to the Christian god, angles, demons, and most specially priests and nuns in different attires walking about in Vatican. I was left to be a little disappointed because this the holiday and rain kept holy people in their sanctuary to prepared for the big Christmas mass.
After two days of walking, I hopped on the tourist tram 28 suggested by many guides. But other than seeing a crowd of tourists packing the tram, I was not sure what was it that I supposed to look for along the route. Surely this tram route takes you past many historical and interesting sites but without knowing which is which, it’s just pretty much foreign city. So I decided to do a Japanese. Japanese tourists take picture of everything instead of seeing the city; once they go home they look at the pictures. That exactly what I did. I switched to black-and-white mode, stuck the camera out of the small window and pressed the button at at almost every walking figure strolling past the tram. I hoped by doing this maybe I would get a feel of Lisbon. Had lunch at a no name eatery at the tram’s last stop. 
The place was almost empty with one old man eating snails as it already passed lunch hour. Normally people recommend you to eat in a crowded place because this proved that the food is good. But whenever I travel alone I preferred to eat with the minimum number of eyes around me possible. Plus, I was typing on the tiny blue tooth keyboard next to my fish plate, so it looked kinda odd.
When I ask for help from people I met in Lisbon, I thought I got full customer service. In many European countries, people help you out of obligation and can not wait to get rid of you. But here, they do it with a smile–big while at it–and sometimes do the extra things you might not need. Two elderly was standing in front of the theater examining the schedule for the musical “Edith Piaf” when I asked them to confirm the date and hours of the show. They immediately stopped their conversation and spoke to me in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese. They asked if they could write down the information for me which I was happily agreed. One lady wrote the date and time for the show in my notebook. When she returned the note, her friend chidingly said to her something like “Why don’t you write her the contact number as well?” The lady took the notebook back and put down the phone number. It’s not entirely true that people living in big cities are colder and annoyed than those who live in villages and smaller cities. The Mediterraneans, more than their Central/Northern European counterparts, will probably make you feel a bit less confused in a strange environment. Another example is tipping. It is not a norm in Europe as in America. I agree that many Europeans I met are too picky and demanding at the waiters; they don’t tip even when given good services; they will only tip when the service is something out of the ordinary. In Lisbon, the capital, tip or no tip, the people in the restaurants surround you with this aura of pleasantness. Notice that I didn’t use the term “customer service” because unlike America who were trained to do it to be professional and to get more tip, people here do it because it’s their personality.
Compared to many if not all major European cities that I’ve been to, Lisbon has far more crazy people. True, crazy people exists everywhere, but at least they are more guarded and don’t bother people too much. Here staying true to their Mediterranean temperament, these crazy acted out. I personally got these guys suddenly from nowhere jumped straight at me, touching me on the shoulder in a shopping mall and shouting at me in the metro. I saw one old guy with infection on his legs and hands just slap another local/tourist who walked past him and not even aware of his action. There are more people with skin disease begging and roaming the street. I wonder if Portugal have more serious immigration problem or the government doesn’t have a proper program to aid these people if it matters to them.
I took tram 15 to Belem neighborhood of white bleached limestone building to see the main attraction, the tower of Belem. There is ground map of Portugal’s marine expansion and conquer voyage around the world, reminding me how powerful this small country once was. Christopher Columbus, though born Italian and expedition funded by Spain, lived in Lisbon. Made a quick trip to check out CCB but there was nothing to see except for some chairs and objects. Snacked at Pasteis de Belem to try one of the best cream custard of Lisbon. The store was found from 1837 and recommended by travel guide and surely it’s something you can’t miss. The creamy, light-sweet custard is served out from the oven, hot , soft and melted on your tongue unlike the crispy kind you might find in other shops. 90 cent for a very small delicacy is bit pricey, but remember you eat it for the experience.
On the tram to Belem, I sat next to a kid and his grandma from Spain. Being a typical grandma she looked at her guide and upon seeing anything new and interesting she shouted across from me to her grandson sitting across the aisle. “Jorge, look!” Then “Jorge!” The boy turned around: “What?” “Oh no nothing.” Said the grandma when she finished reading the book section and decided it wasn’t worth the shout to the boy. They ‘jorge’ and ‘que’ the entire trip to Belem. 2 hours later, on the way back to the center, I sat across from them again by accident. It is funny as the moment we got off the tram, we went off our separate way, doing and seeing various things. Trams go every 15 minutes so to end up on the same one near each other is pretty weird. This time around they stopped jorgeing and queing each other, tired after all the sight seeing probably.
Lisbon is splendid enough to make me think for a short while that it might be one of the few cities that one day I return though this violates my temporary travel principle “never return to the same place twice.” It was lively all day long. More so than their Mediterranean neighbors Spaniards, Italians, Maltese from big cities, Lisboans live on the street. When I walked around the Alfamra to find my way to the castle, I had a feeling as if I had just revisited my childhood in a far-away place hidden in a poor, problematic neighborhood in an off-road street in the suburb of Saigon. Both children and adults were sitting outside in front of shops, houses or at the squares talking and shouting. It was probably too hot to stay inside, and it was not the norm to turn on the air conditioning–like they have any. This reminds me that for the last five years on-and-off around and about in Europe, I’ve never been inside any flat or house which has air conditioning other than the usual winter heater. When it’s hot, people get out. Maybe to curb the rising weight issue in America, just uninstall air-conditioning to force people to leave their houses (other than to work, school, grocery) and head to nearest forest or lake. Big houses, comfortable sofas, big-screen TVs and cheap fast food are going to get Americans fatter and fatter. 
One of the thing I like about the Czechs is they are very outdoorsy and weather-organized. They make sure they do something (park, picnic, lake, bike, canoe) outside when the weather forecast a sunny day. I’m still getting used to hearing Honza reminding me every so often, “It’s going to be a nice sunny weekend. Do you have any plan?” “Well, uh no. Why?” At first I blamed my plan-resist nature for something as small as out-for-the-weekend, but I realized that having grown up in the tropical year-round-hot Saigon and then the mild, pleasant weather of California, I didn’t have to look out for any sunny forecast. It was just part of every day life.
Traveling in the Mediterranean is great because your mind is always occupied with the noisiness and messiness of every day life. It might not work for you if you prefer the calmness, structure and efficiency of countries like Germany, Switzerland or those in Scandinavia.
Fado
I met a French woman from Brittany who was standing on the street looking a bit confused. Either I asked her for time or the other way around, we decided to pull together travel resource which can pretty much sum up to “let just walk and screw the map.” The stereotypical rude French person probably can only be found in Paris as I have yet run into such type from every where else. They are just as polite and friendly as anyone else. This lady already reserved a table in a restaurant in Alhambra where they performed the Fado, Portuguese traditional music. Thanks god I ran into her without whom I would surely skip the 
Fado show because it’s a bit awkward to have dinner in formal setting all by yourself, during lunch time yes but dinner no. This is one of few disadvantages of traveling solo. Sometimes I want to sample local pubs and restaurants but I feel odd to just even walk in there let alone sit down. We had Portugal’s national fish dish, salted sardines with potatoes and grilled bell peppers and a small pitcher of sangria. The highlight wasn’t the fish or the butt-comforting, it was listening to the heart-wrenching, soul-crying Fado. The French lady commented on the similarity between the rendering of the songs by Fado singers and Edith Piaf. It made perfect sense; she had just answered my question why there is a Portuguese musical called “Edith Piaf”. Portuguese understand Edith Piaf more so than other people. I like when traveling in a foreign country is to be able to hear their traditional music, not the kind of traditional performance customized for tourists but the kind which the nation enjoys as well. It doesn’t have to be ancient old, just need to be a bit folksy. This is very rare with today music scene completely dominated by hip-hop, pop and rock.
It is said that Amalia Rodrigues was to Portugal what Edith Piaf was to Paris
Flight
Received the news from Honza about Skyeurope’s bankruptcy and flight cancel around 19:00, but I dismissed it as rumor and continued with the walk around Chido. Later on after comfortable sitting in my flat and cool down after spending two days extra in Lisbon and Madrid, two night bus ride to Barcelona and 90 EUR extra for the flight back to Prague, I had to face Honza’s interrogation. “What were you watiing for? That Skyeurope will miraculously fly again?” Yes actually I did.
It’s true that people don’t really change. They either take on new persona to adapt to new environment or they do change temporarily but the natural self will somehow emerge. Jung’s personality type or the variation MBTI (Myer-Brigg Type Indicator) uses four dichotomies to classify people:
1. Attitude: Extravert/Introvert – How you get your energy and how to direct it (inward or outward).
2. Information: Sensing/Intuition – How you gather your information.
3. Decision: Thinking/Feeling – How you make decision.
4. Lifestyle: Judging/Perceiving – You prefer thing to be decided or open-ended.
(Bing “MBTI” on the Internet if interested. Bing is another search engine similar to Google. I should have used googling but opted for binging to broaden my vocabulary 
)
Anyway, my passive reaction to the news has a lot to do with dichotomy no. 2. Information slips through my head via the intuitive channel than the senses. I don’t see facts as just facts. I interpret to my own use and biased them to my benefits. Instead of getting out of Lisbon fast the minute I got the news, I thought “oh well maybe this is flute. they will fly again. Or I will find some share-ride back to Prague. I will blah blah.” In this occasion, I should have done what I normally don’t: When you see all the signs and after some thoughts and calculation, maybe the best solution is to “jump ship.” That is the only thing I didn’t do while most of my friends did during the dotcom bust. They went back to school, applied for graduate school, changed major to medicine and so on. What did I do? I witnessed the whole thing as simply some events bound to happen rather than a dire survival matter. “You should have jumped ship you know! This kind of behavior might get you at the end.” An ex told me. He might be right. But jump to where? You can jump to some ship that gets you temporarily out of the mess but still leave you stuck in another once a new cycle begins. The dotcom bust somehow worked for me, not in the way my family would have wanted because instead of following what my uncle often termed the right-track, I “jumped ship” from being a Confucian academic model to a neo-bum seeking refuge in some remote camp in a national park, shady bars dealing with shady characters in the Bay Area, walking in freezing-cold weather listening to the imam calling for prayer five times a day, drinking too much beer for the last three years, and these days bumming around Europe.
What’s the point? The point is sometimes it’s a good idea to drag around to explore options before jumping ship, but in this case, get the heck out of Lisbon.
Hihihi, that’s why I have Mister Excel sheet to plan my travel to the minute details, to force in a narrower track “go here, go there, do this, do that at which hour” so and so. Without that travel sheet to keep me in touch with time and reality like taking the night bus to Madrid at 2345 on Monday which then I could fly out on Tuesday night with Wizzair for 60 EUR. But noooooo, I waited to figure something out. Haven’t I been trying to figure some thing out for the last decade already? I have to stop complicating the situation. The best solution maybe the clearest, first-thought idea. I took time to figure out the grandest escape, the coolest cheapest connection out of Lisbon, via Paris, Monaco, Luxembourg (hehe because these are the countries I haven’t been to. I guess if I had to spend extra money, why not going to some place new), Malaga, consulted many airlines and carshare options. By early morning the next day, that 60-euro flight became 80, and by late afternoon, it was sold out and the only option left was Thursday night from Madrid for 119 and then 149 EUR. Yup my grandest escape.
I stayed one extra night at Lisbon and took the night bus to Madrid where I wandered the city I had visited before, half-dead due to lack of sleep, met an old friend for quick tapas before taking another night bus to Barcelona for the morning flight.
…tbc…
I’ve just spent a day and a half to update and fix my other “commerical” blog. Thanks God, it’s only a day and a half as it could have been easily more. I haven’t updated that blog for ages. WordPress version has gone from 2.0 to 2.8. Many links were broken. The pages looked utterly hideous in different browers because the old theme didn’t work with the new wordpress version. Many affiliate links stopped working. My Amazon travel store doesn’t display goodies. Juck! Now the blog looks semi-decent and functional, I wonder if there is an easier and more efficient way of maintaing my blog. Perhaps, I can come up with a check-list/procedure, similar to my other one for manage photos. It can be something like this:
- WP version: Check for newer WP version every 6 months or prompted by a message on the server to update, whichever happens last . On the other hand, if it’s working why fix. I don’t know the downside of this, but one thing I know for sure, the theme I’m using might not be compatible. Theme => the look of the site is the first thing everybody recognizes so unless I fix the theme right away, I have to use an alternative one => losing all the customized work I’ve done.
- Upgrading method: Should I do it manuall or via my server? I don’t even know what’s the difference between these two: requirements and downside.
- Backup blog: How often? Where to save the backup file? How to use this backup file anyway when the blog completely crashes? I backup my blog every once in a while and have these files either saved on the server or in the emails, but I have no idea on how to use them.
- Export posts: How often? Where to save the file? This is essential if you don’t want to lose all of your work.
- Theme changes: I would like change the look every few months, but first I need to understand the very basic of a WP theme template how certain things affect it. Also I need to nail down the part of theme package that will have to change to accommodate my own customization.
- Web design (HTML, CSS, PHP): Good oh lord I have forgotten every thing. Some tags were deprecated since the last decade and I just learned it yesterday. I knew a tidbid of PHP to cut/copy/paste/moving other people’s code around without fatally ruin it, still having a deeper understand of it would have made my life simpler. Moreover, if I care a little bit more for CSS, I could have gotten the page look I want.
- Publishing content: At least this is the only department I’m most decent. I do update more regularly now in a very organized and efficient way. Thanks to Firefox’s Scribefire addon. I keep posts online so I can access them from everywhere. Once finished, I use Scribefire and schedule publish to my blog.
- What else?
I have been on a long-term technology/gadget fasting and try to minimize getting involved too much in the technical side of everything, so to do these kinds of things is problematic for me.
I admit that I’m not very good in the keeping-in-touch department. I rarely email or phone the my family and friends. Sure, I remember them all the time, but still I don’t see the point of contacting them. Weird! And then I get into this mood “Hmm Did I do something wrong? Why did they stop contacting me all of the sudden?” The Vietnamese have a bad tendency to assume that we did something wrong which results in the silent treatment; however we don’t clarify with that person to confirm the assumption. Also we rarely make the first move, which I think has something do with either shyness or inflated ego which I find myself commit alot. Recently, I have been thinking more about the term “friend”, people who were and are my friends, “friends” I keep adding on Couchsurfing and Facebook and the new people I meet through bar/pub/friend-of-friend. It’s definitely not right when I do the last two more often than the first. The year is going to end soon, and if I don’t do it now, I probably won’t. So I compiled a list of people who are my friends and will just cold-call them. (Yeah like salespeople get your name from the phone book and start ringing.)
People who live in the same city will have to see me for lunch, coffee, tea, beer or whatever.
This entry has no introduction yet as it was mysteriously deleted from my phone while I was almost finishing it on the train from Feldkirch back to Zurich.
Train ride
Mountain on one side and lake Zurich on the other together with small wooden houses sharing with lazy cows. Green and grass are visually boring, but since this is Switzerland where everything looks perfectly clean and tidy–including mud–offering a nicer alternative to the noisy Zurich. After the train made it way past Sargaan and headed closer to Austria, the scenery became less and less interesting thus I resolved to close my eyes dreaming. Other than that, I would have to look at the old Indian lady slouching on the seat in front of me.
Feldkirch
It was pretty cool to find out about Feldkirch given I had done only three hour last minute planning before going to the bus station snatching the last bus ticket departing two hours later. The city has a cozy feel of a mountainous city and a small, pretty old town typical of Europe. Sure it is nothing spectacular but it’s way more classier than industrial and expensive Schaan. On Saturday, there is a flea market at the end of the main square. Maybe Austrians have a thing for flea market as there is one 10 times larger in Vienna. It’s good to search for travel tips and tricks online beside gnawing at guide books. Guide books are useful but they can never be up-to-date and provide the precise information that we want.
Though it wasn’t Sunday, shops were either closed or closed early. After briefly touring the town, I decided to return to my hostel which I thought rather comfy and cool. The Youth Hostel “Hostel Feldkirch”, has been operated by the city for 10 years and located about 15 minute walk from the train/bus station as well as the down town. The building is of typical German Renaissance style seen a lot in Strasbourg, France. In the past, it was a leper society where sick people was kept in and isolated from the outside world.
Being called a youth hostel, there were hardly any youth there except for a handful of off-season travelers. A few are foreigners who reside there long-term. They either work in Feldkirch or in Liechtenstein. There is this German guy from Stuggart who sits in the lounge every evening watching TV and volunteered every bit of information to me. He found a job in Liechtenstein working as some kind of engineer after getting tired of paying heavy taxes in Germany. He has been living in the hostel for six months while looking for a flat to move in with his new girl friend. His current situation is financially paradise: living in cheap border city, getting salary in Liechtenstein standard (which is high), paying less than 1.5% tax and paying less than 500 EUR for rent. Like Andorra, Liechtenstein is a tax haven with only 1.2 percent personal income tax. It’s dirt cheap compared to the hefty tax rate common in Europe, reach at high at 50% in Sweden. For a German, he’s quite talkative though later I learn that his parents were from Italy and just recently returned to the country. After two hours watching TV with him, I knew almost everything about him and his opinion about a lot of things like how he watches “Dirty Dancing” for 20 times and cries every single one of it, how he knows too much information about celebrities, how he dumped his Paris Hilton wannabe girl-friend, how he hates the Turks-therefore-Muslims. “I can’t help it. I like what I like and hate what I hate. I don’t travel to Turkey because I just hate them.” He seems to have low opinion of almost everybody from his Polish dorm-mate, an alcoholic-recovered who now works with a group of recovering alcoholic, the Japanese traveler who only ate instant noodles every evening and spoke little English, the Chinese people at his work who for some strange reason keep laughing in group, to two young Asian tourists who had the ball to wake him up from his sleep by the loud noise from their luggage dragged across the wooden floor. “I asked them to be quiet but they didn’t understand and roared into laughter.” I can understand. Young, cute Asian girls from Asia have a habit of giggling when they don’t understand or understand little what being said. His friend once introduced him to good-looking Slovak women and as it turned out “They are pretty but their teeth are freaking black,” he said. Okay then what? “Geez. It’s disgusting! These Americans with the bellies sag to here (making a round belly gesture with his hands). They come out of the supermarket carrying bags big as these (again using similar hand gestures).” He follows me all the way from the lounge down to the kitchen to continue our conversation or rather his stream of consciousness or monologue or whatever you call it. People probably don’t give a shit about his opinion, so once he finds someone who does, he won’t let go that easily. One thing you ladies might find attractive about him is his disregard with typical Italian men’s behaviors. “I have a German head. I can’t live in Italy anymore.” He told me. “My Italian friends asked me who irons my shirts, does my laundry and cooks my meals. I said ‘me’ and they were like ‘Are you gay?’” He rolls his lower lip. (The guy has very expressive face.) “These men stay with their parents until they get married. I have a friend who wed his 10-year girlfriend. They never went on a trip for more han a month alone. He did not kiss her when dropping her off at her house because ‘Are you crazy? Her father will to kill me.’ They divorced 6 months later.”
Liechtenstein is doubly landlocked by Austria and Switzerland, small and rich so it’s probably understandable why Liechtensteiners are not wide-arm open to foreigners even to those Caucasian, German-speaking Germans or Austrians. “My German friend has been living in Liechtenstein for 6 years, but every other weekend he drives back to Germany. He has no friend there. He can’t make friends with the Liechtensteiners.” The opinionated, racist, contemptuous feminist German lets me on in a cultural secret which I am not, at this point, surprised. We can carry on with our world-peace message, promote equality among people, instill the ideal “we are the citizen of the world” or that sort of thing. But we should be level-headed to realize that there are a few things which probably won’t change. Unless we adopt the nomadic lifestyle and immigrate every so often, we have to accept the inevitable discrimination and alienation of the host culture toward its immigrant/expat communities. After all, what goes around comes around. The Ukrainians subjected to discrimination from the richer Russia. The Russia suffers the same fate in richer Czech. The Czechs experience the same fate in richer Germany. One would think the bug stops here, but then the Germans get the cold shoulder from the Liechtensteiners. Try this experiment and randomly pick a country X in the middle of the immigration/emigration chain and you’ll come up with the same X being both the subject and object source of the disdain. Why pick a country in the middle? Because then you can guarantee people immigrate to and from that country. Countries in the bottom means they are dirt poor and don’t attract anybody. Countries at the top have too many immigrants, but their citizens have no need to emigrate. Let’s construct a simple chain.
The chain might be a bit silly since there are more levels lower than the bottom. USA might not be on the top of the chain given their economic situation, but I don’t know if Americans ever immigrate in mass waves from their countries. Germany is at the 2nd level just because the Germans do migrate elsewhere beside having a huge immigration population of their own. Sweden is probably a surprising example to you, but my logic is that it has a large immigrant community and Swedes do migrate to Norway to do menial work Norwegians don’t want, though not the kind of “menial” other poorer immigrant groups have to do.
Riding to Noeffel from the border to return the bike, I saw more of Feldkirch, the beautiful, winding canal and mountainous, countryside landscape of this border city.
9/2009
I took a month (ok a bit more) break from learning Czech and Spanish to re-examine my progress which I am not too much happy about. Just by simply going to classes for two/three hours a week doesn’t really help me. What it does is probably makes me feel good that “Okay I’m taking lessons.” But do I learn really? Classroom and teacher are only some aspects of learning a foreign language. I’m a holistic learner/doer, thus I tend to accomplish things more easily only once I see the situation from all angles and link them all together to create a customized process of my own. I found an article which I think is very good at summing up many factors in learning a foreign language.
Naturalistic’ method
=> You should learn a foreign language as if you are a native speaker learning the first language, similar to the learning process of a child.
- All classroom activity should be conducted in the target language.
- An emphasis on everyday words and sentences.
- Carefully graded question-answer exchanges between teachers (native speakers) and students in small classes.
- Correct pronunciation important.
- Use of objects, pictures and demonstration to teach vocabulary.
- Grammar, if it was taught, to be taught inductively.
Army method
=> Behaviourist psychology (conditioning – habit formation – ‘tabula rasa’ – punishments/rewards). Language is just a learned habit.
- Great use of tapes and language laboratories
- A lot of drilling
- Repetition and memorizing of phrases
- An emphasis on structural patterns rather than on meaning
- Little or no grammatical explanation
- Positive reinforcement of correct responses
- Great importance on correct pronunciation
- Errors must not be tolerated
Seven Characteristics of Successful Language Learners
- They have insight into their own learning styles and preferences.
- They take an active approach to the learning task.
- They are willing to take risks.
- They are good guessers.
- They watch not only what words and sentences mean, but also how they are put together.
- They make the new language into a separate system, and try to think in it as soon as possible.
- They are tolerant and outgoing in their approach to the new language.
The Teacher’s Role
- to motivate; to support the growth of pupils’ self confidence
- to stress some ‘obvious’ points about language learning
- to create situations that will make each pupil as active as possible
- to give pupils plenty to do
- to encourage discussions of ‘how to learn’ and to set activities that will assist ‘learning awareness’
- to convey a genuine interest in learning X
- to ensure that X is the classroom language
I will try the Army boot-camp method and find a teacher who fits the aforementioned criteria or persuade him/her into one.
[Source]
I was on the bike rush, so the first thing I did when getting off the train in Zurich was to check in my backpack and inquired for free bike. Yup I’m not kidding, you can rent bikes for free in one of the most expensive city in Europe, and this is probably one of few places you can get anything for free. I still wonder the reason for this: encourage people to bike, attract more tourists, experiment different ways of advertising or the city has spare money to spend? Getting a bike is easy alright, but then you’ll face a huge problem, navigating in the midst of Zurich traffic. The city is a typical European capital with narrow streets packed with people, buses, cars, and trams. It’s crazy! It’s illegal to ride on the pedestrian pavement, so you have to ride on tiny yellow bike lanes which in many places don’t exist because the streets are just too small. Therefore, you end up sharing the street with all these big monsters. But why am I complaining? Isn’t that I grew up in Saigon, where traffic was a hundred times worse. Streets in Prague are the same if not bigger, and traffic is not as bad but biking in downtown of Prague is not encouraged. So why this practice is even possible in Zurich? Thanks to the notorious law-biding tradition of Switzerland, drivers here obey traffic laws, making them very good drivers. With that comfort in mind, I ignored blasting engine noise around my ears and trams behind waiting for me to move away from the track, I cycled around the street of Zurich as if this wasn’t my first time. One of my hand was on the handle bar while the other occasionally pressed on the camera button. I completely entrusted my life to the hands of the Swiss. Long live order!
I walked the bike along the Limat river and explored the old quarter. But I got a bit annoyed to stop the bike every few minutes to take photos of interesting spots or to avoid the tram, so I resorted to just head straight along the main street until I stopped seeing anything nice. I hit a construction block and had to make right turn to a side street. It was there that I saw a head of me what seemed to be water and pedestrians biking and strolling. There it was Lake Zurich. I was glad to have found the lake after having spotting it first hand on the train to Feldkirch. I had given up on finding the lake thinking that it’s somewhere in the suburb of Zurich and that I didn’t have much time. But here it is, I just walked right into it. I rode the length of the park until I reached the end and backtracked to find a good lunch spot. There was a Chinese garden right in the middle of the park and conveniently a Chinese restaurant next to it. I bought of a box of chow-mein and sat by a tree, next to a group of swans, ducks and birds, watching still boats and slurped down oriental noodles. 
I thought I would just sit here until returning to the train station to catch my bus at 7:30. But after half an hour in this calm, dreamy environment surrounded by peaceful boats, ducks, dogs and people who being Swiss are rather dull, that is they lack the dramatic flare of the Italians. I got bored and decided to go back to the old quarter along the river where I was a few hours ago. On the way back, I saw old buildings on my right and turned to that direction, and once again not following the map served me well, I had found the other part of of Zurich’s old town. After traveling for while, you get rid of this instant urge to see every single sight and destination laid out for you in tourist guide. Sure you should see them all if possible, but every now and then, you leave the guiding up to your senses,follow the aroma from a house hidden some where, to chants of a street protest, to stray melodies from an apartment on the third floor or to a glimpse of something peculiar. Whenever I was ready go back to the train station, dropped off the bike and got ready for the bus, I ran into some nice sights which pushed my wheels further away into small alleys full of sights and things traditionally and typically Europe. I found the church with the largest clock face in Europe by accident doing what I did best: peeking my head here and there in every alley to see if it hid anything interesting. I read about the church in the mini guide but reassured myself that I would not be able nor interested in finding it because it involved maps. Well I found it anyway. Not only finding the church, I walked in an unbelievably calmest quarter where I saw a few ladies sitting on a bench reading book against the enormous clock face amidst a piano sonata played from an opposite building. Not to far from it was a lady taking a sip of water at a fountain before moving on. I could not help but noticing how European the atmosphere was.
Just like that, I had seen many wonderful things of Zurich, which would have been impossible if I had chosen public transportation or walking as I normally did. I met a few bikers and they all agreed on this: biking takes you far and faster than on foot, but it isn’t too fast that you will miss things a long the way. Try out biking when you’re in Zurich, but first be warned that this city is not designed for the fainted-heart biker.
9/2009
This entry has no introduction as it was mysteriously deleted from my smartphone while I was almost finishing it on the train from Feldkirch back to Zurich.
Bike issue
Bus no. 2 took only 10 minutes from the youth hostel to Hotel Gasthof Lowen to rent a bike (Kohlgasse 1, 6800 Feldkirch-Nofels, www.hotel-loewen.at. Phone 43 5522 35 83)
I was still undecided between bike and bus. An overeaten-breakfast stomach and discouraging comments from other hostelers almost convinced me to buy a day pass and hop on the Liechtenstein bus to enjoy an easy ride. In the last minute, my curiosity got over my habit and laziness, and I jumped into the no. 2 bus.
I asked the girl at the hotel reception for routes to Vaduz. She made a gesture and rolled her eyes, “Oh, it’s far a way.” Hmm another discouraging person. She gave me three different kinds of map. The auto maps for Liechtenstein, a big map of Feldkirch, and a combination map of two countries to show me different ways to Vaduz either using the main road competing with vehicles or the countryside road avoiding cows. I dreaded this exact moment because figuring out direction from looking at map is utterly useless for me. While the girl pointed the fingers at the map and told me to “come out here, turn left there and follow the road and then another right blah blah,” I was conjuring up a picture of myself getting lost in the middle of nowhere. I can’t read map even while walking; it takes me an hour to locate a street nearby a square, how am I going to ride to Vaduz, enjoy the thing along the way and return in only 6 hours? Hmm!
I studied the map left and right, holding it tightly on my palm for the first ten minutes. But this was no way to enjoy the ride to stop every few meters spotting street names and reading map, so I resolved to just following wherever I “felt” leading to Liechtenstein and employing the technique which every woman should know best and has no problem of doing which is “asking for direction.” After riding the bike for only 7 minutes, I was concerned because I haven’t seen any people on the street and wondered if I should stop and wait until I caught someone instead of just biking and then may have to backtrack later. Then I saw an old guy heading on the opposite direction and shouted “Liechtenstein” while point my finger straight ahead. “Nein!” He said before stopped his bike and said “Come with me!” Huh! And old man in this tiny border city knows how to speak perfect English? Actually he said “Komm mit mir!” Indeed the self-doubt about my direction-deficit was correct. I had been going on the opposite direction. The friendly old man led me for a few hundred meters to a turn and waving to that direction. “First city is Schellenberg.” I think that what he said.
I continued on the empty country road with just me, my bike, my map and sporadic cows happy and concerned for not seeing any more human beings after riding for quite some time. When I say that I have no self-confidence when it comes to direction, I mean every single letter of it. Seeing a group of locals on a grass doing something, I stopped immediately, put on the nicest face and sang the usual song “Where is Liechtenstein?” and “How to get to Vaduz?” Biking, looking at grass and sky and cows, shooting photos with one hand while trying to get it in my head that I’m really biking to Liechtenstein, I saw from afar the sign of Liechtenstein. Yoohoo! Why didn’t I get into the biking business sooner. Only 15 minutes and I was already sold on the idea of biking. It is so fast and so much fun. Walking doesn’t allow you to see many places before your legs scream rest. Especially when there is nothing special to see, you will be bored to dead and start to regret the time, effort and money spent to get there.
The scenery from Austria to Liechtenstein stays the same, and you don’t recognize that you have entered another country, long road, flanked by grass field and grazing cows. I was amazed by the cleanliness and orderliness, but at the same time missed the messiness usually seen in the country side: dog poop, cow shit, brown mud and stuff like that. I stopped for a couple of time more to make quick photo sessions of unsuspecting cows, goats and the open space which they settled in before reaching Ruggell, a bigger city with blocks of houses. But it was also dead on a Sunday morning. I roamed the city a few minutes and encountered a congregation in front of the church. It was either a typical Sunday morning service or a special event of some kinds because kids were dressed in traditional costumes. It was not the group of people that attracted my attention though. The neat layout, beautiful carving and decorated tombstones from the cemetery caught my eyes. I was sitting on my bike holding to the fence surrounding the cemetery to examine a few tombstones when all of a sudden I heard lively music from the church quarter. What a contrast! The dead and the living.
Now I am confused as I was not sure which way to turn. I was about to turn around my bike when I caught a grandma floating in and out the cemetery. I stopped her before she got a chance to run away and asked “Vaduz?” “Ooh, Vaduz?” That was the first and only word which I understood. The amiable lady started shouting and singing in German on the street, waving her arms pointing to the direction behind me. It was obvious from her expression and gesture that the city was far away. But since her arms kept rising up during the course of her speech, for a moment I thought I might have to cross over a mountain or something like that. Sensing the friendliness of the lady, I asked her for a photo which she happily agreed. But when she pressed the button, the flash automatically released, startling the technically inept old woman. Instead returning the camera to me, she pointed at the camera with wonder, speaking some more and laughed hysterically. I bid her goodbye, and only was able to leave after I repeated what she was trying to say for 3 times. I guess she meant goodbye.
Rhine River
I came around the circle and seeing the red biking sign, I turned left. But when seeing a man standing on the front yard with his kid; people in Liechtenstein don’t stay out often, so I have to use my chance. It was a good thing because once again, I managed to go on the wrong direction again. He told me to backtrack to the circle, cross the bridge and follow down the Rhine. Another 10 minutes, and I found myself back in Switzerland. Cool huh, I have biked the entire width of Liechtenstein. From then on, it was an easy breezy ride along one of the longest and most important river in Europe. It originated South of Liechtenstein, flowed north and formed the border between the Liechtenstein and Austria on the east, Switzerland on the west before empty itself in Lake Constance. This wasn’t the first time I ventured out to region along the border. Once I even managed to crossed three borders in less than a couple of hours between Germany, Czech and Poland just for the heck of it and additional stamps on my passport. This harmless doing caused me minor stress a few times later when I had to go to Munich to arrange my work visa. The border control police checked my passport longer than usual to figure out and question me the strange behavior on that day. Here was a stamp when I crossed from Liberec to Zittau, another exit Germany when I walked over to Poland, an entry stamp within 15 minutes back into Germany and another exit stamp a lunch later to be back to Czech Republic. It was before Schengen treaty though when border control spied at your every move. There is rarely anything to see at the border, but for some reason, I am attracted to it. Whenever I’m at the border I see how similar “different” people are in term of physique, languages and ways of life. They are even more similar to one another than their own country men. I was at this tripoint, on the German soil, where Czech, Germany and Poland met. Right in front of me on the left side was Poland and to the right was the Czech Republic. There was one woman walking in Poland along the stream with her dog, a couple walking the same way on the Czech land and behind me were elderly Germans leisurely riding their bikes. If all the flags were removed, I would not have known which country I was standing and at which I was looking. This precise moment had me thinking about how strange it was that 60 years ago these people fought against each other in the most horrendous way.
After crossing the Rhine to enter Switzerland, I hardly see any distinction among the Swiss, Liechtensteiners and Austrians. There are many bikers and few inlineskaters along the bank going on the opposite of me. (I read on a tourism magazine about inlike-skating cross-country routes in various places in Switzerland and thought about returning next year during the summer to try it out.) I don’t know what got into me that day since I kept asking people for Vaduz when every single one confirmed that I needed to follow the river. You know there is only one direction when following the river bank right? If anybody wants to re-enforce the stereotype about women don’t read maps and ask for direction, just use me. By the time I came back to Feldkirch after my mini bike tour, I had asked a total of 16 people.
Vaduz
When seeing a bridge in front of me, I suddenly remembered that I was on the Swiss side and decided to cross that bridge. And what do I know, I was already in Schaan. It took another 10 minutes riding in the country side passing more cows and goats before I got to the city center. Thanks god I didn’t stay in Schaan like the original plan. It’s not because I save thirteen euros per night on accommodation, it is because now look at the city, I’m not sure how am I going to spend two days here, one of these days when everything is closed and the town is dead. I rested at the church before continuing on into the heart of the city. There was nothing to do so I biked on toward the direction of Vaduz. Seeing the castle from afar, I attemped to skip the main road to see the house behind the vineyard and maybe the street to lead up to the castle. It is not open to the public as most castle in Europe because guess why, the royal family is living there and I’m standing right on their vineyard. Taking photos of grapes and green got bored very fast, so I did what any normal people would do in my position. I started picking vines from the bunch, mouthful of handful of small juicy grapes. Oh the swetness and juiciness of the grapes drench my thirst, and the excitment is even more because this stolen fruits, not just from anyone, but from the Prince of Liechtenstein. 
Good and free but you can’t just stand there binge on the vine. Also my paranoid kicked in warning me that I might get fruit poision. Yup that’s right. I was fraid to get poison from wild fruit I might not know. Yup, on the vineyard of Liechtenstein Prince. How neat! And I expect to do an escapde similar to that of Alexander Supertram, the real-life main character of the book “Into the Wild,” who ventured his way across America before eventually making to the wild Alaska. I do enjoy being a woman, especially now in Europe with all these cute, little girly clothing that I can try on, and being a woman, I think you can get away with a lot of things in life. However, only when I read about someone like Alexander Supertram, I suffer tremendously from what Freud terms “penis envy.” Only as a man, one can travel that freely, slept off the street without a slightest worry that darkness has closed in on him nor keeping an eye for other men whose interest is not on his material things. The last two sentences has been added just now as I’m editing the original journal. It has nothing to do with the trip itself than with the book “The World According to Garp” I have just finished. It’s probably the book’s recurring theme of feminism which makes the last editing-minute notice of the difference and thus the result/luxury of men and women. By no mean I want to imply the difference is the “penis” itself though old Freud would have loved to hear that.
Back to the main road and bike on into some place and walk my bike and there it was the capital.
As warned by the German at the hostel, the instant I stepped one foot into the main square, I heard noise and laughter from a group of Chinese tourists. But if it weren’t for the Chinese, Vaduz would have been a dead town. The only few places were opened on Sunday were souvenir shops, the museum, the tourist information office and those pricey tourist restaurants. A lunch menu cost from 27 to 40 euros. Geez, and I already complained paying around 15 euros for lunch in other Western European cities. Like the Swiss, the people here adore their cows, judged by the wide range of cow souvenir displayed on the glass shelves. Oh boy aren’t they creative. There was a geisha cow which covered with sushi and adorned in Japanese motif, choco, farming cows so on. The price for these cows racked up to 150 euros. 
The square is tiny, and it takes an easy fifteen minute walk to see it all. Thanks god I had the bike, otherwise I would not know how to entertain myself for the rest of the day. I got a tourist stamp from the Tourist Information Office for 2 euros. Not sure why other countries don’t copy the business model. There is no overhead, no cost, no expense to set up this business. All they need to have is the ink-soaked stamper, make an attracting advertising sign and just sit there waiting for naive tourists to come in and pull out their passports “I want one of the stamp please.” With the Schengen treaty ratified, I miss my days of collecting stamps and don’t mind to pay extra euros for these silly tourist desire.
Rode back and stayed on the main street Feldkircher. It’s likea highway with no scenary just cars and two bikers heading across from me. Stay there for another hour until got to the border. Now the next step was to figure out where where I was to get to Noeffel to return the bike.
Met an Austrian volunteer who took my photos, walked with me around the square, drove drove me to the train station to buy ticket to Zurich for tomorrow, sneaked me off to a Tibetian temple in Franstaz before dropping me off at my hostel. It ate the same pasta cooked yesterday before fnishing up today journal and went to sleep.
9/2009
